Elegy to a country churchyard

A garden with a church as its focal point is both movingly effective and mellow, with nods to a horticultural hero and a ruby wedding anniversary, as George Plumptre discovers

- George Plumptre

The garden of Stockcross House, Berkshire

The home of Edward and Susan Vandyk

HANDSOME Stockcross House, with its distinctive gables, started life as the village vicarage when it was built in 1848. Appropriately, the adjacent St John’s church, which had been built only a few years earlier in 1839, provides the raison d’être for much of the garden, which folds around it on two sides in an L-shape. The tall, elegant church tower, with its Gothic windows and corner turrets, is the focal point for a subtly changing series of views that reveal themselves as you explore the garden, binding the two together in a reassuring fashion. Susan Vandyk, who has created the garden, says that, over the years, she has constantly looked up and thought: ‘What can I do here to frame that view of the church?’

Church ownership came to an end in the early 1980s and Stockcross became a private house, but the development of the garden as it is today only started with the arrival of Mrs Vandyk and her husband, Edward, in 1993. They had previously lived at another old vicarage, at Sutton Courtenay in Oxfordshire, where Mrs Vandyk had commissioned a garden designer. As the work progressed, she thought to herself ‘I think I could do that’, so, when they moved to Stockcross, development of the garden was to be her own work.

She started with a blank canvas, especially in what was to become the main area of garden extending from the house to the south, with the church adjacent to the east. This was a long slope of rough grass, but a few good trees helped to provide focal points.